CON 40% (40)
LAB 30% (31)
LD 18%(18)

But another margin of error poll

After all the speculation that Labour could expect a big hammering in this weekend’s polls the first survey, from ICM for the Sunday Telegraph, has only one change on the last poll from the firm before Christmas – a one point decline in the Labour total. All the other numbers are the same.

The standard way of comparing polls is with the last survey from the firm – not the last poll commissioned by the newspaper – so the Telegraph’s headline “Week of bungled plots boosts Labour in poll” is inaccurate.

Many papers, including the Guardian which is the main commissioner of ICM polls, now make a point of referring to the latest survey even it wasn’t one of theirs. But hey – here that would have conflicted with the headline.

Whatever the poll will come as a great relief at Brown Central and I certainly was not expecting Labour to still be up at 30%.

The Tories – like in so many recent polls – stick doggedly at 40% and, indeed, the party has not been below that figure with ICM since last June – seven months ago.

For us to really get into hung parliament territory then the Tory share needs to slip and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The fieldwork took place on Wednesday and Thursday so it’s likely that a significant part of the sample were not aware of the H-H plot to oust Brown when they were interviewed.

My understanding is that Populus started their January poll for the Times yesterday and the fieldwork will continue until tomorrow. That should be out on Monday evening. Generally ICM undertake the fieldwork for Populus and their methodology is broadly the same.

Mike Smithson

***New Bunnco article on PB2***